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Today's SF is more focused on human story elements, and SF has become a venere to package a writers human drama story in.

There is nothing wrong with better human story elements. We are all fascinated with people, but the best SF writers are more philosophical explorers vs human-story tellers. It is the lack of philosophical exploration that I miss.

SF is uniquely a platform to ask 'What if' questions. Framing these sorts of 'big questions' in a human story makes it more accessible to the reader, and the more interesting the characters and more we care for them, the easier it is for us to understand the odd/difficult question the author is asking us to consider.

Somewhere along the way, the crystal core of the 'what if' question stopped being necessary to sell a 'Science Fiction' story. And so books with all the trappings of a sci-fi story but without the heart began to be classified as SF.

So now we are left in a world where there are more books than ever being written classified as SF, but are in reality just typical human drama stories with a spaceship in the background.

Why is this?

Perhaps it is because miracles of technology become reality so quickly now that we no longer need to philosophically think about the future, we can just live it and explore it directly.

Perhaps it is because society it too squeamish/slow moving to embrace the miracles that technology currently offers (Bans/heavy regulation on GM food/human cloning/stem cell research, the rise of the anti-tech eco-movement) and so the thought of the future provokes more of a sense of disgust/horror than yearning/excitement.

Perhaps it is because the world has become more of a milky stew with no clear strong enemies to fight. The Taliban and the North Koreans are more nuisance than they are a real threat. The biggest threat and harm they pose are the dangers of over-response similar to an allergic reaction. The big existential threat of Communism is no more. The last large 'Communist' country of China (with government controlling 20.8% of GDP) is more capitalist than the US (where the government spends 38.9% of GDP) so it is no longer clear who or where the 'enemy' is (The capitalist won in that everyone sees the benefit of trade over war, but the socialist won by figuring out a way to control about 1/2 the productive output the capitalists produce). The threats to freedom now are much more grey, nuanced, and closer to home.

Perhaps the long-form novel itself is no longer the best medium to ask these hard questions. Reddit and other social media create a platform where ideas can spread/compete more quickly than the time and effort it takes to craft a compelling novel.

Personally, I think it might be time for the creation of a totally new genre/classification and let go of 'Science Fiction' as a term with any real meaning. It isn't that the current SF stories are bad it's just that they aren't what a person who enjoys what SF used to mean is looking for. The classifier has become so deluded/burdened that it might be better to abandon it altogether.

Are there any up-and-coming terms used to describe stories that:

At the core, are about exploring an interesting/deep 'What if' question, where the human drama is just the icing and not the meat of the cake itself (as distinguished from space opera, and other fictional stories where there are no interesting philosophical questions asked).

Are closely bound to 'real world' questions with 'real world' contexts (fantasy is unrestricted by these rules).

Rooted in the belief that the world is ultimately a rational/understandable place and that the resolution of the questions asked within the story are likewise rational/understandable (no appeal to religious/magical thinking as an explanation).

'Science Fiction' largely covers #2 and #3, but the lack of focus on #1 is where the most stories classified as 'Science Fiction' today currently fail to hit the mark. Personally I think such human-story-centered stories are probably more correctly classified as simply 'fantasy', but I think that is a losing battle no longer worth fighting. Better to move on and something new than fight a battle lost long ago.

This is a clear and perfect articulation of my own thoughts on SF (that I'm constantly expounding to my girlfriend, I'm sure she's sick of it!). I've been wondering how mainstream this definition of SF is, with its insistence on thought experiments and philosophical questions.

I wanted to add, though, that it may be true that we as a society feel more squeamish and less optimistic about the future than we our parents or grandparents did, but for me the heart of classic SF has always contained an element of discordance. If a SF story doesn't make me feel uncomfortable, it probably isn't good SF.

It seems to be a widely held belief that our society is more pessimistic than those that have come before. I disagree, my father was brought up during the cold war and the fear/tension associated with that time seems much more daunting and imminent than the dangers we face. I understand that the issues of we face are great but the factors behind them are complex and hard to define, whereas nuclear war with the Russians is confronting, simple and deadly.

I think that's part of the reason they were so optimistic about the future, their world was a few shades darker then ours, so the only thing they could do was hope we dodged the nuclear holocaust and moved on to greater things like space exploration.

I definitely agree that some of the most compelling 'what if' questions are the truly uncomfortable ones.

What bothers me about the anti-tech/eco crowd is the focus of 'evil' has been shifted from 'them' to 'us'. Before it was the Commies enslaving people, maybe blowing up the world. Now it is consumer society itself that will potentially destroy the world as it slowly enslaves our minds and pollutes the planet.

This is a flavor of pessimism that provokes distrust of the self's ability to solve a problem (since humanity and human progress is itself seen as the problem) which I think leads to less thinking about the future, and therefore less interest in what-if questions.

It's one thing to be scared of the dragon outside the castle walls, another to realize that you've become part a of the dragon itself.

I'm not much of a Sci-Fi reader (came here from DepthHub), but I would really like to read the kind of SF you're talking about. I loved 1984, and I love books that make me feel shocked or disconcerted, like The Grapes of Wrath.

Could you give me some recommendations for good SF books like the ones you're describing?

Also came here from DeprhHub. I'm shy to make recommendations around connoisseurs, but OP is talking about "Hard SF", and the classic practitioners are Arthur Clarke, Hal Clement, and Stanislaw Lem. Some would debate the last but Solyaris is pure philosophy through a human lens.

My favorite modern books in that genre are by the same author, Neal Stephenson: The Diamond Age, about tribal society, nanotechnology, and education, and Anathem, which is at times too wonderful to be believed. It connects many-worlds theory, hard physics, and secular/religious tension, in a world sharing the same physics and chemistry as our own. Mostly.

For me, personally, that emphasis on the human element has improved SF greatly (edit: I think sparkane, above, said so very eloquently), though I agree that it takes the genre to a place where it is no longer "Science" Fiction (this is why, in literary circles, SF is usually a stand in for Speculative Fiction, since the category is broad enough to include both "What If" and your idea of "Fantasy"-type stories, which I would be more inclined to call Slipstream).

You say that "SF is uniquely a platform" for asking these questions. One of the fundamental issues/underlying causes you don't really mention is that the onus of asking "What If" and other hard philosophical questions has fallen into the purview of other genres--particularly the literary, the avant-garde, the kitsch, the post-modernist. If Heinlein and Sturgeon and Asimov, et al., asked the questions "What is the nature of consciousness?" and "How do social/historical forces shape who we are as people?" and "Is it even possible to communicate an idea successfully to another human being?" then many of those same questions (and others) were taken up by the likes of Georges Perec, David Foster Wallace, WG Sebald, Thomas Pynchon, Gaddis, Gass, Tom McCarthy, &c. The onus of asking hard philosophical questions fell between the covers of hard, sometimes "unenjoyable" books.

And here's why (and here's where I make a controversial claim): the "What If" and philosophical questions you lament the loss of got harder in the wake of 1) the socio-cultural forces you mentioned, and 2) the influence of continental philosophy and the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy. I would say the fact that people becoming disillusioned/disenchanted with technological advancement/the future is only a small part of it because, if one is to "read up" on contemporary philosophy so as to intelligently pose those kinds of questions in fiction, it gets harder and harder to "realistically" represent these ideas in fiction (even Sci-Fi).

Genre writers, whom I encounter fairly often, don't really want to ponder or try to represent rhizomatic societal relationships, or the nuanced ramifications of transhumanism on gender identity, or the aporia that results from encountering collapsed binary oppositions. Rather, they want to tell a story about the "awesome" things they imagined and have revered since their childhood daydreams. I think, for the most part, that kids absorbed the cool-factor of the sci-fi worlds they encountered in books/TV/movies but ignored the attempts to address a "What If" question in a nuanced way.

I'm not saying you can't have a compelling SF story that addresses both the human element AND some interesting "What If" questions. I think Anathem by Stephenson was a great story that dealt with ideas from Penrose, Godel, Husserl, Plato, and Parmenides in a really compelling way. But I am saying that if you want to encounter fiction that deals with the philosophical speculation you seem to desire, you're probably going to have to turn to Teju Cole, Ben Lerner, Dennis Johnson, Christopher Higgs, George Saunders, Helen DeWitt, Jennifer Egan, &c. (only living/currently-working writers in that list...).

I adored Anathem. Thank you for so many other names to look into. Few philosophers would dare to connect Derrida with Greg Bear, but why not.

Of your rec's, who is as bright and accessible as Stephenson? In my experience few modern philosophers are storytellers (saving e.g. Mark Z. Danielewski) and very often they seem to be disgruntled at the reader from the beginning.

Most of the great post-modern works, the gargantuan monoliths of hyper-intellectual thought, were, like you said, designed to be hard for readers to access. Recently, in the last 15 years, I think there's been a turn towards fiction that employs post-modern "tricks" while still managing to be an enjoyable read (even among the social-realists). MZD is definitely included in that (though, small quibble, his background is in film studies, not philosophy). (I actually can't believe I forgot MZD in my original list; thank you for bringing him up!)

My background is in English and Linguistics--right now I'm getting a second Master's degree.

If you're interested in philosophy, I recommend taking some elective courses at university, as this will introduce you to the origin of a lot of philosophical dilemmas (it all goes back to those damn Greeks) and their trajectory through time in the hands of other philosophers.

But when it comes to beginning to learn philosophy on your own, the best advice I can give is 1) take Nietzsche with the biggest grain of salt you can find (he's a great writer of iconoclastic aphorisms, and his easy style makes him a good starting point for the young, but he's just one voice and certainly not the end-all-be-all), and 2) read widely, randomly, and track back through lines of influence. Years ago I became really interested in the works of Stanley Fish, who mentioned Wolfgang Iser. Iser led me to Gadamer and Heidegger, and pretty soon I had developed a strong interest in hermeneutics and phenomenology. Heidegger led me to Husserl, who then led me on a weird path through Bertrand Russell, who led me to Wittgenstein, who led me to de Saussure and Peirce, then to Derrida, de Man, Spivak, Jameson, Marx, Hegel, and so on. Forward and backward through time, interspersed with older philosophers from whom they were all drawing: Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Hume, Descartes, Plato, etc. etc.

Most of these philosophers have a "Reader" that you can check out from your local or university library which collects major excerpts from their bodies of work while also providing good introductions that break down the concepts and talk about their significance (and influence/s, which is good for deciding what to read next).

If you want a short list of a few "philosophical" books I found accessible and pleasurable to read, I recommend starting with Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Roland Barthes' Mythologies, Adam Zeman's Consciousness: A User's Guide (and if you dig this, read Oliver Sacks' The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat), and Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy.

If you want to know where to go from there, or find out how wrong I am about any of this, the fine people over at /r/philosophy are extremely helpful and intelligent and well-read, I've found, and I'm sure they'd be happy to help you in all of your speculative endeavors.

Start with Sophie's World by Jostein Gaardner, or if the idea of consuming philosophy through a novel bugs you greatly, try 'The Story of Philosophy' by Will Durant (~1921), which captures both profound philosophical developments and a mesmerizing passion for the context of -and implications for- each philosophical insight.

The onus of asking hard philosophical questions fell between the covers of hard, sometimes "unenjoyable" books.

My thoughts as well. Foundation is classic literature, but actually it's not a particularly enjoyable read, because there aren't good characters or a human story.

Once SF writers figured out the characters are what give a book broad appeal, not the interesting what-ifs, they naturally moved that direction.

I'm not saying you can't have a compelling SF story that addresses both the human element AND some interesting "What If" questions.

I agree, it's just that the people thinking about what-ifs often forget to include characters, so their books end up less enjoyable and therefore less popular. Which means I haven't even hard of half the authors you list, because none of my friends have ever mentioned them to me. So thanks for the list; I'll start checking them out.

My own take - the initial excitement of the philosophical space that was opened with the advent of mass society's contemplation of the possibility of life and lifeforms outside our small planet, which started with the space age (with its own wonder and euphoria), has run its course, and been mined for all it's going to produce.

The narratives used in the regular fiction world have been the same for centuries, but because humans like to lose themselves in human stories, the same stories retold in terms of new times and places still appeal year after year. Science fiction, on the other hand, has to evolve and move on in order to still appeal to a large enough audience, I think, and it hasn't done that.

My own deep bias is that we're burned out on the promises of science and capitalism, and if SF wants to appeal to what people are contemplating in the modern day, it should start including a large component of cultural speculation, not just technology. For example, the idea that people are going to be married in societies where we travel the stars and command effectively infinite energy makes me cringe. It looks as silly as The Jetsons. Show people how they might live. That's a tough order for current SF authors who tend to fetishize the business world and consumer culture, but I think that's where we're at.

Going to keep this very short. I more or less agree/sympathize with your feelings/observations about scifi. However, I will go out on a limb and pontificate that these "what if" questions you mention are never ones where "the human drama is just the icing". The Big Questions are only about the human drama -- or, more grandly, about what it means to be human. Scifi, grandly writ, presents stories of what it means to be human in relation to some technological change, real or hypothetical. The effects of that technology on us, the humans who made it, on our world.

Technological changes don't really have any story to them. They are fascinating. But the technological changes that lend themselves to more compelling dramatization are those which open up important questions about ourselves.

As an example of "scifi", I'll put forward the movie Never Let Me Go. This movie is about clones -- that's the only spoiler I'll give. However, the movie has barely any science in it -- perhaps zero if you don't count just being told that some characters are clones. But I count it as scifi because the entire story is based on the presumption of a technological detail. And then it tries to ask a very big question, about the humanity of those characters. I think there's definitely room for debate about the quality of the movie, and how well it asks that question. But it does at least try to go there. And it goes there in a way that is typically scifi-based, if not explicitly scifi on the surface.

I think there has always been a place for these human questions within the context of science fiction, especially in popular culture: Look at Star Trek (not print, but it's the classic example of SF as social commentary; Heinlein might work here from the classics though the case isn't quite as strong). The power of science fiction is not just to ask, "what if" but to comment on social issues as an outsider, avoiding preconceived notions while addressing topics such as racism and - hopefully - working towards societal good.

Furthermore, the truth is that we are living in a world where everyone has more computing power than was used to get to the moon in their pocket. People are being tracked by multinational corporations (even just for service provision), living their lives in concert with strangers around the globe, and sharing ideas at the speed of thought / typing. Companies have supply chains that span the globe and have margins of error of only hours. IBM is trying to build "intelligent cities" while copyright wars are waged over the human genome. Science fiction's ability to ask "what if" questions is being hampered by the fusion of science fiction and reality. To quote something that is decidedly not science fiction:

"Speculative fiction" is a term I've always liked for the harder (scientifically sound) SF that concentrates on plausible futuristic scenarios, rather than being the more "artistically free" kind of Space Opera with light sabers and all that (or any other kind of futuristic fantasy, with emphasis on the fantasy aspect).

Classic stories like 1984 and Brave New World, and the more recent movies Children of Men and Moon would, in my view, be some prime examples of this kind of SF, whereas Star Wars and most other SF not so much, if at all.

I think, maybe, what you're seeing is a distinct change in literature itself over the past thirty or forty years, rather than just science fiction. When you look at romance, besides the idiotic dross that comes out every now and again, the ideas there have changed too, and it's the same for every genre -- A Song of Ice and Fire anyone? There's been a greater focus on existentialism, and the post-modern idea that there isn't a fixed meaning to life, and it's not the place of a writer to impose a meaning onto a reality that they don't believe has one in the first place.

Early writing sought to make the meaningless meaningful. I think science, throughout history, has been marching towards the point that our place in the universe is not special at all, it's just a place where life happens to exist. The heroes and villains are all of our own making, and not divinely inspired like Achilles and Odysseus.

This change isn't just in literature, but in all of art. Where previously a beautiful stream in an idyllic park was art, there came along someone who said, "Why? This is not a real place and it will never be a real place. Even if it is based on a real location, these colors on paper cannot capture it, at best they are a representation." They moved away from trying to glorify God through art, and man through art, but rather to ask big questions about the genre itself -- the sort of meta thing. What is art and does it have a meaning? Is it necessary that it be expressed a particular way?

I think that goes back to the "what if" question. Maybe writers are shying away from asking those big questions because they're afraid of being editorial in their work. In order to ask "what if," you have to start from a base reality, and maybe authors aren't looking for one anymore. Personally, I think that's nonsense, but that's my own opinion. I just think that perhaps what publishers are buying might be skewed a certain way.

But here is my basic take: you're right. Science fiction is way too broad a term, because sci-fi is not a genre, but a setting. It's a universe in which a story is told, and I believe every traditional genre can be represented in this setting, and I believe only one has been given its own name: a science-fiction universe set in an otherwise normal world, typically driven by human drama, otherwise "magic realism." However, there is sci-fi horror, sci-fi action/adventure, sci-fi mystery, sci-fi drama, sci-fi crime, sci-fi comedy, sci-fi thrillers, and so on. There's also cyberpunk, but I'm not sure where that goes.

I think what you're looking for is a resurgence of the sci-fi epic, in which the most interesting thing isn't necessarily the characters (though I would argue that for a story to be interesting it has to have interesting characters), but rather the backdrop against which the universe is set. I think that would be neat as well, but the fact of the matter is that modern audiences are expecting writing in a certain way, and perhaps authors are also more interested in how such a universe affects the people in it, rather than exploring the ramifications of the universe itself. Or maybe they are, but just setting it in a more personal context, so it's easier to relate to.

Edit: Also, I wanted to point out that I was linked here from DepthHub, so I'm unfamiliar with this sub and its etiquette. I hope I got my meaning across, though.

of course they're not mutually exclusive. that's my entire point. sci-fi doesn't need to go to suck, scifi isn't going to suck just because the trash scifi has moved from being thrillers to romances. I'm not even sure sci-fi has changed, that this was ever a battle. you just haven't read enough of the shitty stuff. tell me the philosophy in burroughs, the deepness of a 10 cent 'killer aliens from jupiter' book, the integral what-if in McCaffrey, please. this tripe has been here since the dawn of sci-fi, i find that obvious. What i'm saying is that the gems are still there, that there's nothing to worry about.

I disagree, there have always been sci-fi stories that have lacked the big "what if" and always in greater number. The reason it seems otherwise is that the "what if" stories are the ones that stick with you years after you read them.

Frankly, sci-fi is a type of setting as opposed to a type of story, and while it lends it self better to exploring certain "big questions" it isn't necessary to do so, other genres routinely do so as well.

I think, maybe, the distinction you're trying to make is really between common "garden" variety sci-fi, and "literary" sci-fi.

a lot of what you are saying strikes a very strong chord with me. Honestly, I think that people have moved away from philosophy as something that is worth studying, and I think it's kind of sad. We tend to think of philosophy as very impractical and stuffy, but I think that in fact it remains very necessary to think about what we as a society want, and what we value. The inanity of the current political debate speaks to this: neither party has contributed a new way of seeing the world in 30 years. People are afraid of philosophy because they think people are too stupid to understand it. But while the depths of human stupidity are truly awesome, so true is the pinnacle of human understanding.

As far as your point about the lack of enemies, I think (slash hope) that this is a generational issue. It is very difficult for people who were raised in the cold war era, or any time before, to really grasp the current international political climate, in the same way that someone who was born in 1950, no matter how much they study, will probably never take to the digital revolution as naturally as a 12 year old. It is my sincere hope that as my generation (Y) matures, we will start to see fiction that is uniquely geared to the contemporary world.

And I continue to have faith in the novel. Count me an optimist, but I think it still has a lot to say.

In my mind Soft SF is where there is much hand-waving with the technology/physics, perhaps so much that it starts looking more like magic. Hard SF uses more 'real' physics and clearly explained technology.

Obviously Hard SF conforms more with #3, but #1 is the dominant aspect I'm most concerned about.

Being careful with the physics helps make the story more real, just like being careful that the human relationships makes the story more real, but the 'big question' should still be the core. A Hard SF space-opera doesn't necessarily ask any interesting philosophical questions, and if the price of an interesting philosophical question is softer physics that is a bargin well made.

Really? I think it's just as likely for Soft sci-fi to be about the exploration of what-if ideas as Hard sci-fi. Whether the aliens have a telepathic gun destruction beam, or a genetically engineered metal eating virus, either story can ask how the earth would resist a hostile invasion without being able to use weaponry.

I've thought it would be cool if reddit had a grammar/spelling club. Subscribing to it would be voluntary, of course.

I like to know when I've made a mistake but seldom offer corrections because they are often seen as pedantry and not in the helpful spirit they are intended.

I foresee a potential problem of it devolving into arguments about style choices but that's ok. Feedback is given in a take-it-or-leave-it manner. For example, I often write "kinda" instead of "kind of". I know it's wrong but I do it anyway. My choice.

I don't mean to tell you what to do. Just offering my idea for a community of contributors, which is yours to take or reject. I think a bot responding to those who don't want its help will be considered rude, where if one joins the club the bot will be considered helpful.

It's up to you, of course. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

I feel like most of the deeper questions are going into "what ifs" concerning social media (Feed, Super Sad True Love Story, etc.) Personally, that doesn't captivate me as much as the big questions that were on people's minds during WWII and the Cold War.

I suppose it depends on how far in the future the story leads and if it is the human story itself that is the focus, or how society evolves due to the existing technology. If the story speculates in a meaningful/interesting/non-obvious way on how the culture will evolve then I would say it fits. But a story that is set in the near future without anything interesting to say about how the tech will change society woud really just be contemporary fiction, and really no different than a space opera except the setting is a bit more familiar.

I agree entirely, and am reminded of something in the foreword to an old Asimov magazine. I can't find it anymore, but it was about the distinction between real science-fiction, and space fantasy. I think his conclusion was that "s.f." should refer to what-if stories, with sci-fi for human focused stuff.

I think it's just because it's become more popular. Any genre, when it achieves popularity, becomes saturated with god-awful crap, but I think we'll still occasionally see great science fiction come along at just the same rate as it used to.

Depends on what you define as the "best sci fi". Star Wars was a fairly average fantasy story that happened to be set in space, while the few pages of Snow Crash I read were, let us say, not to my taste.

On the other hand, Isaac Asimov, who was terrible at dialog and character and not that great at storytelling, wrote some of what I found to be the most engaging science fiction writing because of his speculative ideas.

Good storytelling can be found in any genre. What sets science fiction apart is the speculation, the "what if" questions, the outside view it provides.

Reynolds is a good guy; Kinkaid's essay however has struck me all along as poking genre with a big stick to stir up some personal profile.

If there's any question to answer, it should be directed at the marketing departments of publishing companies, at book sellers, and at, yes, critics and reviewers: "Why are these the books you're promoting?"

The answer, of course, is that they're safe bets. Just like every other aspect of the media, accountants want reliable product, not ground-breaking art.

There are a hell of a lot of fabulous, wild, experimental writers out there, transcending genre in every direction you can think of. Most of them are either totally unpublished, or self-published and near-unnoticed (Kirsty Fox's fab Dogtooth Chronicals comes to mind).

If there is any problem in SF -- and the complaints in this debate seem to mainly boil down to "It's not doing what I want it to do! Me! Me! Me!" -- then it does not lie with the writers.

He says he's not going to fight,and keeps his word. He's humble about his own work, and generous to other writers.

Am I good for science fiction, or is science fiction good for me? If I had not written a word, would the field be better or worse or indeed no different?

This strikes me as too heavy a burden for a writer. Writing readable fiction is hard enough. Let the writer do the best he can with what he's got, and not worry about whether he's bearing the well-being of the genre on his shoulders. Posterity, as Reynolds says, will sort things out.